In speaking before the House of Representatives after his death, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that Lantos "devoted his public life to shining a bright light on the dark corners of oppression... He used his powerful voice to stir the consciousness of world leaders and the public alike."[5] U2 lead singer Bono called him a "prizefighter", whose stamina would make him go "any amount of rounds, with anyone, anywhere, to protect human rights and common decency".[6]

In 2008, after his death, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which he founded in 1983, was renamed the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. Its mission is partly "to promote, defend and advocate internationally recognized human rights". In 2011, the Tom Lantos Institute was set up in Budapest to promote tolerance and support minority issues in central and eastern Europe and in the world.[7]

Lantos was born Lantos Tamás Péter (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈlɒntoʃ ˈtɒmaːʃ ˈpeːtɛr]) into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, the son of Anna, a high school teacher of English, and Pal Lantos, a banker.[8] His family was heavily involved in education and included an uncle who was a professor at the University of Budapest and a grandmother who was a high school principal. His life in Hungary would change after the Third Reich annexing of Austria in 1938, with the Austrian border just 100 miles from Budapest. Lantos remembered this period and a newspaper headline he read when he was only 10, "Hitler Marches into Austria". Even at a young age, he understood the significance of this invasion:[9]

"I sensed that this historic moment would have a tremendous impact on the lives of Hungarian Jews, my family, and myself."

Six years later, in March 1944, the German military invaded Hungary and occupied Budapest, its capital. As he was Jewish, Lantos, then 16, was arrested and sent to a forced labor camp outside of Budapest. He escaped but was soon caught by the Germans and beaten severely, to be returned to the labor camp. He again escaped but this time made his way back to Budapest, 40 miles away. There, he hid with an aunt in a safe house set up by Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat.[9]

Lantos joined Wallenberg's network; his fair hair and blue eyes, which to the Nazis were physical signs of Aryanism, enabled him to serve as a courier and deliver food and medicine to Jews living in other safe houses.[10] In January 1945, less than a year later, Russian military forces fought door-to-door battles and liberated Hungary from Nazi occupation. However, Lantos, then 17, returned home only to discover that his mother and other family members had all been killed by the Germans, along with 440,000 other Hungarian Jews, during the preceding 10 months of their occupation.[9]

Wallenberg, for his part, was later credited with saving the lives of thousands of other Hungarian Jews.[11]

After graduation from Berkeley, he became a professor of economics at San Francisco State University. In subsequent years, he worked as a business consultant and television commentator on subjects of foreign policy. He eventually became a senior advisor to various U.S. Senators and in 1980 was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he remained until his death in February 2008. Recalling his early life, he announced his retirement by stating to Congress, "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."[9]

Despite being fluent in English, Lantos never lost his Hungarian accent. During his childhood, he met his future wife, Annette Tilleman (or Tillemann; born June 27, 1931), then using the name Agnes Ethel Seymour. Her family had managed to escape to Switzerland, using Swedish passports issued by Raoul Wallenberg. After Hungary was liberated, she and her family returned to Budapest where she and Lantos met again. After emigrating to the United States, they married on July 13, 1950. They remained married until his death in 2008. Agnes Ethel Lantos became a naturalized United States citizen on May 17, 1954 under that name.[15][16] Annette (formerly Agnes) Lantos is a niece of Jolie Gabor, whose brother Sebastian was Mrs. Lantos' father, making Magda, Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor, Jolie's daughters, first cousins to Annette Lantos.[17]

Lantos and his wife had two daughters, Annette Marie and Katrina, and 18 grandchildren, including: Levi, an author and energy expert; Tomicah, a former Democratic political speechwriter; and Charity, an opera singer and activist. The Lantos' daughter Annette was married to Timber Dick, an independent businessman in Colorado,[18] until his accidental death in 2008.[19][20]

Lantos made his first run for office in 1980, challenging Republican Congressman Bill Royer, who had won a 1979 special election after DemocratLeo Ryan was killed in the Jonestown massacre. Lantos defeated Royer by 5,700 votes. He never faced another contest as close as that one, and was reelected 13 times. Lantos earned a reputation as a champion for various human rights causes, such as having Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang testify at a congressional hearing, when the company turned over the email records of two Chinese dissidents to the Chinese government, allowing them to be traced and one sentenced to jail.[22][23]

Among his other efforts was a demand that Japan apologize for sex slavery during World War II.[27] He declared Turkey's mass killings of Armenians during World War I to be Genocide.[27] In more recent times he supported democracy in Burma and pressed for sanctions on Iran for supporting terrorism.[27] In 2004 he sponsored a bill to stop the spread of anti-semitism.[28]

On other aspects of American foreign policy, Lantos spoke out against waste, fraud and abuse in the multibillion-dollar U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq, and warned that the U.S. could lose Afghanistan to the Taliban if the Bush administration failed to take decisive action to halt the current decline in political stability there. Lantos was against U.S. military aid to Egypt as the Egyptian military had failed to stop the flow of money and weapons across the Egyptian border to Hamas in Gaza, and Egypt had not contributed troops to the peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere.[29]

Lantos was a strong supporter of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. During the run-up to the war, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, of which Lantos was co-chairman, hosted a young Kuwaiti woman identified only as "Nurse Nayirah", who told of horrific abuses by Iraqi soldiers, including the killing of Kuwaiti babies by taking them out of their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floor of the hospital. These alleged atrocities figured prominently in the rhetoric at the time about Iraqi abuses in Kuwait. The girl's account was later challenged by independent human rights monitors.[30]

"Nurse Nayirah" later turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Asked about having allowed the girl to give testimony without identifying herself, and without her story having been corroborated, Lantos replied, "The notion that any of the witnesses brought to the caucus through the Kuwaiti Embassy would not be credible did not cross my mind... I have no basis for assuming that her story is not true, but the point goes beyond that. If one hypothesizes that the woman's story is fictitious from A to Z, that in no way diminishes the avalanche of human rights violations."[30]

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation sent investigators to Kuwait who went through the hospital and counted the incubators and they found that "except for one or two that may have been misplaced" all of the incubators were still in the hospital. The investigators concluded that there were no deaths resulting from stolen equipment. And the doctor who provided Amnesty International with the number of babies killed dropped from 312 to 72 and then 30, 19 of which died before the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. After the war, The New York Times wrote, "It's plainly wrong for a member of congress to collaborate with a public relations firm to produce knowingly deceptive testimony on an important issue.[31] Yet Representative Tom Lantos has been caught doing exactly that. His behavior warrants a searching inquiry by the House Ethics Committee."[32]

On October 4, 2002, Lantos led a narrow majority of Democrats on the House International Relations Committee to a successful vote in support of the Resolution for the Use of Force, seeking the approval of the United Nations and under the condition that President George W. Bush would allow UN weapons inspectors to finish their work and that Bush would need to return to Congress for an actual declaration of war before invading Iraq. The resolution later passed the House and the Senate with a total of 373 members of Congress supporting it. "The train is now on its way", said Lantos after the resolution successfully passed both houses of Congress.[33] In later hearings on the war, Lantos continued his enthusiastic support.

Starting in early 2006, Lantos distanced himself from the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, making critical statements at hearings, on the House floor and in published media interviews about the conduct of the war. During hearings of the House International Relations Committee, where he was then the ranking member, Lantos repeatedly praised the investigative work of the office of the Special Inspector of Iraq Reconstruction General Stuart Bowen, which uncovered evidence of waste, fraud and abuse in the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars intended to help secure and rebuild Iraq. Lantos was an immediate and consistent critic of the troop surge advocated by President Bush. On the night in January 2007 that Bush announced his plan, Lantos responded, "I oppose the so-called surge that constitutes the centerpiece of the President's plan. Our efforts in Iraq are a mess, and throwing in more troops will not improve it."[34]

The Administration's myopic policies in Iraq have created a fiasco. Is it any wonder that on the subject of Iraq, more and more Americans have little confidence in this Administration? We can not take ANY of this Administration's assertions on Iraq at face value anymore, and no amount of charts or statistics will improve its credibility. This is not a knock on you, General Petraeus, or on you, Ambassador Crocker. But the fact remains, gentlemen, that the Administration has sent you here today to convince the members of these two Committees and the Congress that victory is at hand. With all due respect to you, I must say ... I don't buy it.

At the same hearing, Lantos drew comparisons between some of the current U.S. activities in Iraq to U.S. support two decades ago of Islamic militants in Afghanistan:

America should not be in the business of arming, training and funding both sides of a religious civil war in Iraq. Did the Administration learn nothing from our country's actions in Afghanistan two decades ago, when by supporting Islamist militants against the Soviet Union, we helped pave the way for the rise of the Taliban? Why are we now repeating the short-sighted patterns of the past?[29]

As co-founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in 1983 and as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Lantos would "stir the consciousness of world leaders and the public alike", according to Representative Nancy Pelosi. She added: "Wherever there was injustice or oppression, he used his expertise and moral authority to put the United States on the side of justice and human rights". In 2007, in his effort to help the people of China and Tibet, he presented the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal.[35]

The American Hungarian Federation recognized Congressman Lantos for his "Leadership in Support of Democracy, Human Rights and Minority Rights in Central and Eastern Europe", awarding him the organization's highest award, the "Col. Commandant Michael Kovats Medal of Freedom", at the October 19, 2005, Congressional Reception commemorating the 49th Anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.[41]

On August 27, 2006, at the Israeli Foreign Ministry building in Israel, Lantos said he would block a foreign aid package promised by President George W. Bush to Lebanon unless and until Beirut agreed to the deployment of international troops on the border with Syria and Lebanon takes control of its borders with Syria to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah guerrillas.[42]

Lantos supported Morocco's demand to gain sovereignty over Western Sahara, and criticized the Polisario Front, which demands independence for the disputed region. In 2007, he backed Morocco's proposal to make the region autonomous under Moroccan rule, saying: "I urge the leadership of the Polisario to realize that they will never again get such a good deal for the population they purport to represent."[43]

On January 2, 2008, after having been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, Lantos announced he would not run for a 15th term in the House but planned to complete his final term, and thanked Congress:

It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."[27]

Lantos died of complications from esophageal cancer on February 11, 2008, before finishing his term. A special election was held to fill his seat on April 8, 2008 and was won by former State SenatorJackie Speier, whom Lantos had endorsed.[44] Shortly after his death, Roy Blunt, the House Republican Whip, stated that "Chairman Lantos will be remembered as a man of uncommon integrity and sincere moral conviction — and a public servant who never wavered in his pursuit of a better, freer and more religiously tolerant world."[45]

On June 19, 2008, President George W. Bush posthumously awarded Lantos the Medal of Freedom. In a ceremony at the White House, Bush stated "We miss his vigorous defense of human rights and his powerful witness for the cause of human freedom. For a lifetime of leadership, for his commitment to liberty, and for his devoted service to his adopted nation, I am proud to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously, to Tom Lantos, and proud that his loving wife Annette will receive the award on behalf of his family."[47]

In 2008, Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which he founded in 1983, was renamed The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. Its mission is partly "to promote, defend and advocate internationally recognized human rights." The first Lantos Human Rights Prize, named in the congressman's memory, was presented to the 14th Dalai Lama in 2009. In 2011, the Institute was set up in Budapest to promote tolerance and support minority issues in central and eastern Europe and in the world.[7]

In the final weeks of his life, Lantos asked that a non-profit be established to carry on the work he felt so passionately about. The Tom Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice was founded later that year to carry out that wish.[48] Lantos' daughter, Katrina Lantos Swett, serves as the Foundation's President and CEO.

On September 10, 2011, the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA officially opened the Tom and Annette Lantos Center for Compassion, located at 1450 Rollins Rd. in Burlingame, California. The facility was funded with a naming gift in the Lantos's honor by Oracle founder, Larry Ellison, and his wife, Melanie.[49]

During a 1996 Congressional inquiry into the "Filegate" scandal, Lantos told witness Craig Livingstone that "with an infinitely more distinguished public record than yours, Admiral Boorda committed suicide when he may have committed a minor mistake". Boorda, the Chief of Naval Operations, had taken his own life after his right to wear Combat V decorations had been questioned. Lantos was criticized by some (including fellow Congressman Joe Scarborough) for this comment.[54]

On May 3, 2000, Lantos was involved in an automobile accident while driving on Capitol Hill. He drove over a young boy's foot and then failed to stop his vehicle and was later fined over the incident for inattentive driving.[55]

In 2002, Lantos, who was on the House Committee on International Affairs, took Colette Avital, a Labor Party member of the Israeli Knesset, by the hand and, according to Haaretz, tried to reassure her with these words: "My dear Colette, don't worry. You won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the @#!*% soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you."[56] He later denied saying this, but Avital confirmed it, according to Ben Terrall, an adviser to Maad H. Abu-Ghazalah, a Libertarian Party candidate who ran against Lantos that year.[57]

On January 6, 2008, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds included Lantos' photograph among others featured in the "State Secrets Privilege Gallery" posted on her website, composing images of figures considered to be relevant to her case.[60] On August 8, 2009, she gave sworn testimony about Lantos and others during a witness deposition before the Ohio Elections Commission in the Schmidt v. Krikorian case, in which she alleged that he had engaged in "[N]ot only ... bribe[ry], but also ... disclosing highest level protected U.S. intelligence and weapons technology information both to Israel and to Turkey. ... other very serious criminal conduct."[61][62]

^Louis Sandy Maisel; et al. (2001). Jews in American Politics. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved May 21, 2011. "The only Holocaust survivor to serve in the United States Congress, Tom Lantos was born February 1, 1928, in Budapest. Just 16 years old when the Nazis invaded Hungary, Lantos was active in the underground resistance before he was imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp in Hungary."

^Janine Zacharia. "Lantos's list". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on January 21, 2007. Retrieved 2007-02-15. Born in Hungary in 1928 to assimilated Jewish parents, he escaped from a forced-labor brigade, joined the resistance and was eventually, with his later-to-be-wife Annette, among the tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews rescued by the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.

^"Yahoo Criticized in Case of Jailed Dissident". The New York Times. Associated Press. November 7, 2007. Retrieved 2009-04-19. 'While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies', Tom Lantos, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said angrily after hearing from the two executives, Jerry Yang, the chief executive, and Michael J. Callahan, the general counsel.